Thomas Brezing/ Artist (Germany), Dorsaf Garbaa/ Poet (Tunisia), CeeJay/ Rapper/Poet (Belgium) & Peter O’ Neill, Translator/Transverser/ Poet (Ireland)
poetry, tranSLATION, art & music
COMMUTING WITH BAUDELAIRE
Charles Baudelaire (1822-1867) almost single-handedly caused a Copernican revolution in the way in which we perceive ourselves in the world. For this reason T.S. Eliot called him the father of Modernism. In but a single book, Les Fleurs du Mal, he changed the course of World Literature. His influence is still everywhere, and in every corner of the world. There is, quite simply, nobody like him in the English speaking world, which of course is why so many English speaking poets, and translators, attempt to translate/transverse him.
Peter O’ Neill & Thomas Brezing
(Ireland & Germany)
The overall idea behind the project, what makes all the pieces integral, is the narrative which underlines the thoughts of a morning’s commute.
A young man thinks about his dying or dead father, he gets on the train, sees a beautiful young woman reading a book, falls immediately in love – I am using Baudelaire’s A une Passante as a hook- and they hope to be able to reconstruct the world…
(Peter O’Neill)
King Lear MK DI
the inherited smile is borne like an affliction rigor mortis in life accursed remains of a tribal inheritance you attempt
to expunge pathological compulsion to conform the overwhelming necessity to control horrendous ignorance and
vanity which fuels your desire abominable egotism murderous masculine death drive
you my proud father struck out on the savage heath embrace now the true desert of your spoils
Janus
the tedium of the voice assaults sometimes in great lethargic waves the face of the mind is unhinged words enter it through the brow
inside they permeate in winds releasing spores to other worlds unless of course the doors are closed physiognomy illustrates best cafard
after forty we deserve the face
we get so it is said You’ve
always believed this to be true
suffer the torment existential then crack up laughing just as soon both masks emblazon every theatre door
Father’s Day
no more to hear the sound of your voice in my ear
its insidious and tiresome intervention
never again to feel the vestiges of hate and pain
You then the doom monster weighed down
with correspondences to the old gods
all either killed or long since forgotten
omnipotence being a thing of the past
hadn’t you heard? no of course not
aloof in your turn in Olympus
in thrall still to authority a leftover
from your own past You then my proud father
last of the great patriarchs like some
figure out of Shakespeare or Euripides
and I assigned the task of your murder
The Scatologist
my father was a strange man with a
predilection for toilet humour
and a morbid fascination with
the Nazis both I have since inherited
I remember much to
My poor mother’s shock giving him
a book about Auschwitz for Christmas
never was he more happy at the kitchen
table growing up talk would invariably
degenerate into talking about
flatulence or body odour
he came from a middle class family
brought up in a beautiful home
I guess some people are just drawn to shit
Character from the Ninth Bolgia
grotesque harpy atrocious
specimen whose ass cheeks cascade
about her face sphincter squarely
centred in the middle through the labial
folds her shitty lips expose the enamel
awash with Armitage Shanks the faecal
stained phonemes are projectiles spray-
ing out in open verbage all about
waffling all content full of the under-heavens
head shoved right up mind swamped
in the waters of the Styx bubbling hot words of it
her cancerous pit mind ass and tongue
FULL OF IT eyes lolling in cataracts
the white’s dawning being heaven proofed
The Judge
aloof distant uncommunicative
and PROUD it is always the one’s
who have the least reason to be
who are Why? the obstinacy of
the damned call it all these superb
specimens yourself included
refutation as a way of Be-ING
again the signs can be uncovered
on the face head tilted back
to the auspicious incline
the appraising look so practised
and carried off with such cool disdain
all the litany of negatives
unleashed like dogs then from the tongue
Circe
from deep within your loins she springs
urging you on skyward to her your whole
horizon being encompassed by her spheres
the magnetism of her lithe limbs
moving languorously and with purpose
there is stealth equally to be found
in the mesmerism of her eyes those
twin souls of gravity pooling you back in
such biotechnology allied to cultural
inheritance can only partly explain
the inherent charm of her ways
between the twin poles of pleasure and fear
she resides and you with a gentle yet
steady hand attempt to trace her deliverance
The Cyclops
Cave dweller, law breaker, God défier;
Devourer of men and shepherd.
His great club, ‘olive-wood, sap-full’,
We’d plane it down till it formed a great lance
To impale the ‘all-seeing’-Eye!
Red hot coals to fire and smoulder,
The glowing wood to flame, burning his sight.
The great iris, then, like a blackened sun
Leaving him vision-less and howling.
His monotheism rekindled into actual night,
The circumference of his world re-defined
By touch alone, a savage empiricism.
Cyclops forced to kneel and re-examine
The very nature of his particularly, violent fate.
Morning Commute
We climb aboard the commuter train arbeit macht frei
Huddled together on airtight carriages impregnated with
The odour of deodorant, perspiration and cheap perfume.
At 8 AM, the majority of us are mezzo del cammin
And most of us males suffer from intestinal
And bladder complaints, while our female counterparts
Pre-menopausal! Into the gyre of annihilation, in one
Form or another, we descend. The younger amongst us
Sleep, as the rest tap nervously on their iPhones.
Only one or two read; we are becoming distinctly
A more eccentric breed, us readers! Because of this,
I become interested in my immediate neighbour.
Sockless in brogues, like me she turns the page.
The buttons on her overcoat burn talismanic.
Despite the anonymity some of us can still reach for the sublime.
The Big Apple
O monumental languor, limbs heroic,
Planed and sculpted with quiet amplitude.
Hear the sonority of her stride, it still resonates,
Eclipsing all other visions.
Keen magic pouring forth again, the scent of you;
The invisible edifice of perfume.
Senses interrupt, jostle to summon structure,
The smooth banks and pillars of her ivory thighs.
This archaeological splendour is ruinous, twofold.
Hypnosis occurring at each breath on the tongue,
You then the demon vocalising at my ear.
Serpentine- Rapturous- Coiling;
Richly mesmerising with every word.
I merely follow the signs, seeking divination.
Et les grands ciels qui font rêver d’éternité
And the great skies which make you dream of eternity.
In September blood-soaked, with the winnowing
Collapse of palatial summer.
Its rich golden tapestry of rosemary and aZure
To be replaced by mothballs and spider,
Their sign’s of entrance litter the damp recesses
Of your floor, a further sign of Autumnal decay,
Its burnished brilliance illuminating through
The great Torc of light spilling drunkenly
Over the dew- ridden- fields, to further butter
The anonymity of your fellow passengers,
Clarifying their ordinance, radiating against
The most banal backdrop of the door to the public toilets.
And all hinting at the scent of urine, still bottled in your head.
Portrait of a Young Woman on a Train
La douceur qui fascine le plaisir qui tue.
Baudelaire
She is a dirty blond, her face the very picture of youth,
As yet, seemingly, untouched by Life;
Such is the miracle of creation. Her handbag
Hangs from the gentle scaffold of her arm,
The murderous black leather having been tattooed
With bolts of burnished gold, also bearing
The holy runes of some designer’s name.
What inside does the urban Pandora bring?
As if in answer, you look down and follow the undulating
Severity of her hose, pouring itself into the twin
Phallus of her heels, such then is She dressed
For the infinitely opened wound we call Living.
Back up then to her eyes, mirroring the finite sea,
Now it storming in mercurial tints.
The Grounding
The infinite position is the imminent peril of your emplacement,
Such should be your grounding at every encounter.
For from such a perspective can come the wholly equalling
Level of horizontality, allowing you to lie down with one another,
Totally unencumbered by the impossible trappings
Of the forbidding echelons of absolute emptiness;
Doom spheres spawning vertical cancer,
Hourly calculations of liquid ice flows.
Sea changes involving continents of plastic,
Inside which swim fish with hardening anatomy.
The menu on offer will induce testicular cancer.
So, lie back with him/her and enjoy the tantalising notion
Of your own sheer vulnerability; how they might kill you with but a word.
Or, for all your days, help you to finally reconstruct the world.
XCIII. – A Une Passante
Par Charles Baudelaire
La rue assourdissante autour de moi hurlait.
Longue, mince, en grand deuil, douleur majestueuse,
Une femme passa, d’une main fastueuse
Soulevant, balançant le feston et l’ourlet;
Agile et noble, avec sa jambe de statue.
Moi, je buvais crispé comme un extravagant,
Dans son œil, ciel livide où germe l’ouragan,
La douceur qui fascine et le plaisir qui tue.
Un éclair… puis la nuit! – Fugitive beauté
Dont le regard m’a fait soudainement renaitre,
Ne te verrai-je plus que dans l’éternité ?
Ailleurs, bien loin d’ici ! Trop tard ! Jamais peut-être !
Car j’ignore où tu fuis, tu ne sais pas où je vais,
O toi que j’eusse aimée, ô toi qui le savais !
To a Passer-By
The deafening street about you screams.
Tall and slim, a great duel, majestic suffering,
A woman passes with a deft hand,
Balancing it between her brow and the hem of her skirt.
Agile and noble, and with statuesque limb.
You drink her in, consumed like some extravagant.
Through her eye storms birth above you in the livid sky.
The gentleness which captivates the pleasure which kills.
Lightning bolt… and then its night! – Fugitive beauty
Whose look suddenly makes you come alive,
Will I not see you again for an eternity?
Elsewhere… Far from here… Too late… Perhaps never!
For I have no idea where you have gone, nor do you know where I am,
O you whom I could have loved, O you who knew it.
To a Passer-by
Version 2
All about you the deafening street roars.
A great dual ensues; O sweet majesty of pain…
A wonderful Amazon passes you with a lithe
Hand, balancing between her hem and her brow.
Noble agility, with aquiline limbs…
As for you; you drink her in, with as much extravagance.
From her perspective – the sky is livid, born of hurricanes;
Her gentleness captivates, her pleasure kills…
Lighting bolt…and it is night! – Fugitive beauty,
Her fervent glance quickly rejuvenates…
Will you only ever see her in dreams?
Elsewhere, not far from where you are, it is already too late.
Ignorant of you, and where you’ve gotten to, she who doesn’t
Know you. The one you could have loved…O, but how she knows you…
To a Passer-By ( III )
The deafening street about me screams.
Tall and thin, a great duel, majestic suffering,
A woman passes with a sumptuous hand,
Between brow and hem it lifts and balances.
Noble and agile with statuesque legs.
Me, I drink her in, stressed like an extravagant.
In her eye, the livid sky is where storms birth;
The gentleness which fascinates the pleasure which kills.
Lightning…then night!- Fugitive beauty
Whose look suddenly rejuvenates?
Will I not see you again until eternity?
Elsewhere, far from here! Too late, perhaps never!
For I, you are lost to me, as I am to you.
O you whom I could have loved, O you who knew.
Dorsaf Garbaa (Tunisia )
Transversions Peter O’ Neill
Biographie
Qui suis-je? je l’ignore ou qu’il est à vrai dire si embrouilleux de décrire tel qu’il fallait …exigeant .
24 hivers passés depuis que j’ai vu la lumière et je ne peux aujourd’hui me voir aux doux reflets de mes incertitudes sans évoquer ma passion des mots, de ma Tunisie, de la mer méditerranée aux éternels, des dunes sablées au Sahara du Sud et de mon Père.
Née à Tunis, entre des bras carthaginois et grandie auprès d’un homme épris par Hannibal et ses milles batailles et triomphes, je devrai certes appartenir á cette suspension de temps inédite. Ce décalage temporaire et spatial de ma réalité et mon surréalisme qui m’est suave confusion.
Je vois ces mégots froissés au sol, l’amertume du tabac au creux de mes narines me chantonne doucement les anciennes comptines à Bizerte, cette ville côtière qui suscite les songes royales d’un moment inachevé et qui a marqué mon enfance
Là-bas où le Français de ses délices a pris route dans mes veines. Là-bas où j’ai passé quatre ans de mon enfance entre l’univers verdoyant et la mer azurée d’un coin si calme, si désirée.
De ces jeux d’enfants dans l’école privée des « Sœurs » et les petites filles a jupes marines qui renvoient le pâle reflet d’un souvenir savoureux.
Tendre douceur me revient. A l’odeur de la clope en train de s’éteindre au coin de mes lèvres, je me retiens à m’éprendre aux rêves de l’enfance un peu trop lointaine pour ma mémoire qui flanche.
J’ai fait trois ans en marketing avec neuf ans de désir pour l’écriture. J’écrivais depuis que les choses ont commencé à résonner dans ma tête. Depuis neuf ans et mes feuilles blanches sont submergées par des lettres inondées. Qui diffère d’un saut d’humeur à une joie exaltante. Oscillations d’humeur. Caractère lunatique marqué par ce que je lisais. Je dévorais les livres et je m’en réjouis.
Je me suis toujours imaginée être aux souffles de la littérature, un navire qui s’expire. C’est ainsi. Car mes parents sont tous les deux tentés par le côté littéraire. Ma mère avait fait des études de droits et mon père. Ah mon père, et son amour pour l’histoire ancienne.
Parler avec lui ressemble à une évasion vers la couleur rougeâtre sanguine d’un combat indécis. Vers une guerre de jadis. Vers la période punique …vers Carthage et ses colonnes d’Hercule : Sicile puis la Sardaigne, la Corse, Malte et les îles Baléares.
Lui il a l’histoire, moi je n’ai que mes mots poétiques. C’est mon héritage ou peut être ma bénédiction.
Comme un orchestre. Même si je n’en ai jamais vu, c’est comme un orchestre. Ça bouge pareil, ce sont les mêmes mots, les mêmes sonorités, les mêmes lumières. Ce sont les mêmes et les mêmes choses, l’un vient de l’autre ou de l’autre vient l’un, ça se confond dans un amorphisme parfait, c’est une homogénéité perpétuelle qui fond sous l’ombre du désert et gonfle au soleil d’un torride août en Tunisie.
Puis il y a les livres qui me sont tels des murs blancs d’une chambre pudique, perdus dans leur teinte blafarde, transparents sans leurs ombres cristallisées .Gustave Flaubert et sa simplicité enivrante, Alphonse de Lamartine avec sa sensualité désespérée et Charles Baudelaire. Oui lui ce dernier est tout une langue universelle, une grâce de la femme…frappant les cœurs rêveurs.
C’est moi qui s’identifie sur leurs lèvres et eux qui m’irriguent de sensualisme éphémère, tempérament de lascivité… Les trésors de Baudelaire.
Ça fait de moi la fille de Carthage aux flots baudelairiens.
Biography
Twenty four winters have passed since I first saw the light of day
and I can still only see myself reflected back through my many uncertainties.
Born in Tunisia, I grew up living with a man, my father, who was still under the spell
of Hannibal of Carthage, because of this I am used to inhabiting multiple worlds.
My relationship with time is also spatial, imbued with visions of the Sahara
and the Mediterranean, all helping to possibly explain my innate surrealism.
For example, when I see cigarette ends littering the earth, and the scent of tobacco
enters my nostrils, I can almost immediately recall the nursery rhymes I learned in BiZerte.
This ancient port and city is the most northerly point in North Africa,
and it arouses, for me, all of the dreams of my childhood.
It was in this place that all of the delights of the French language entered my blood,
It was here where I spent four years of my childhood,
Here I was caught between the verdant fields
and the azure of the sea, so calm in its tidy little corner.
It was here that I played all of those childish games among the Sisters
dressed in our little blue skirts, which reflect back those souvenirs to savour.
A tenderness returns as I pull on the cigarette which dies between the corner
of my lips, as I try to hang onto these childhood memories.
I started writing as soon as things began to reverberate in my head.
I spent nine years filing notebooks in a sea of words, words which oscillate
Across the blank pages as alternating as my many moods,
Like some lunatic character, marked by what she has read.
For years I devoured books, and I always imagined myself
leading some kind of literary life.
Both my parents too loved books.
Both studied law.
Ah, my dear father with his love of history!
Speaking with him was always like plunging into some bloody film
Conjured by images from the Punic Wars evoking Carthage,
with its Columns of Hercules; Sicily, Corsica and Sardinia.
He had the full weight of history behind him,
I had my poems. Such is my inheritance, perhaps it is my benediction.
I see it all, sometimes, like some fantastic orchestra,
as it works in the same way;
There are the same lights and sounds,
the same subtle sonorities, playing suddenly in great musical shifts.
It is a perplexing homogeneity, one which is first grounded in the desert shades
before exploding then under the torrid Tunisian sun.
Finally, I wish to speak about my books,
the white walls of which are filled in my Spartan room.
I would loose myself slowly in their illuminating tints, all transparency
having been lost by their crystallized shades.
Flaubert is among them with his inebriating simplicity.
As is Alphonse de Lamartine with all of his depraved sensuality.
And, then, there is Baudelaire.
Yes, it is with this last one that a whole universe is evoked.
With feminine grace slashing all of their poor dreamy heads,
it is I who identify with him upon my lips,
Exhaled, as if in a plume, all of the ephemeral sensuality,
All of the lascivious pleasures…
I the girl from Carthage immersed then in a sea of Baudelaire
Placidité
Et c’est quand, sur son corps, elle glissait
La petite robe noire à pointillés
Que sa peau tournait en prodigieux écrin,
Renfermant des trésors aux milles et un parfum.
Les arômes qui s’en dégageaient
de les envoûter sans permission,
Eux, ces hommes de mer…ces soldats d’enfer
Ceux qui pudiquement ne se lassaient
De s’aligner aux orbites de ses sphères…
Les emportant vers les vallées des délices…
Respirant…la vanille, la rose, le jasmin, le pain d’épice…
Et tant d’autres qui leur incitaient à la consommation.
De par ses courbes subtiles,
Elle les rendait instantanément fébriles.
Elle, enivrante de ses longues jambes de satin
…les attisait sur un tango d’évangile,
Les courtisant de son regard angélique
Sans pour autant être ni sage,
Bien autre que docile…
Dans ses ébats amoureux…
De ses collants en muette dentelle
Elle se révélait au nid des hirondelles
Dévoilant sa sensualité de reine
Un dévorant plaisir fougueux, charnel.
Toute femme à ses secrets bien dissimulés
Mais pour elle c’était bien différé
avec sa petite robe noire à pointillés
Elle… des lèvres des marrés
Jaillissait tel un nectar aux saveurs brisées
Dotée d’un cœur qui étincelait pour que l’on flatte.
À ne la point prendre pour autant vulnérable,
Car elle avait certainement
En ces creux inabordables
Cette détermination de femme … inexorable.
‘Placidity’ – The Mothership
It is when she slips into that little black shimmering dress
that her skin becomes transformed into a prodigious vessel,
birthing the cargo of a thousand and one perfumes.
The aromas which escape entrancing , without having her permission,
the fishermen in the port, those poor labourers
some of whom, due to modesty, could not even conceive
of any alignment of spheres,
there in the sumptuous valley
where blossom:
vanilla, ginger and jasmine… the scent of roses…
And many more besides,
which could incite the urge for consummation.
All of these mere fragrances,
not even having mentioned her ingenious flanks,
which, once gleamed, merely prolong the fever.
But then to further intoxicate and inflame, dear reader,
contemplate if you will her two aquiline limbs, like Doric columns,
breaking into an evangelised tango,
casting a further spell on those few still remaining in the port
with any semblance of reason, for they too will also be finally unhinged,
our made sheepishly docile.
And, if all of this should not suffice,
imagine those two legs enveloped in stockings,
stitched together with mute lace,
and whose delicious whisperings call to only you
with every scissors like movement.
Such is the revelation,
which swam freely through the open nets of the fisher kings.
This Queen of sensuality,
passing over the waves of their collective imagination,
whose very storehouse of images finally rupture
through the firewall at the thought of such carnal pleasures…
Every woman, God knows, has her secrets to conceal.
But, she was different, particularly when she was dressed in that
little
black
shimmering dress,
Bearing her lips on the tides
awash with all of the nectar induced from broken dreams,
those the shipwrecked,
and she endowed with a heart,
which craves only a good word.
And yet, on no account be taken in that she is one so vulnerable,
for deep within her, behind this prohibitive hollow,
there moves also
the determination
of inexorable woman.
Vol des sens
Obscure clarté
Se dégageait du ciel lointain
Étales flambées,
Bellement, s’affligeaient
Faisaient de ma dissonance
Fatale morosité
Fanatiques fardeaux,
Aux gestuelles des houles
Ondulatoires, s’enjolivaient,
Et mornement De mes illusions,
Se nourrissaient, se naissaient.
Sinistres creux,
Sphères raffinées,
En symbiose, se dissipaient,
S’envolaient loin de moi
Tel qu’un las bonheur
Caresses placides
En ma cervelle s’accointaient
De ma chair, s’abritaient
Pour, de sa faim nocturne,
Et à ses baisers de fer,
Quand les murs s’humidifiaient,
Je saurai, contre lui, se mouler.
S’extasier …
Et puis cette succession imagée
D’un souvenir ardent, inachevé,
Qui, autrefois, m’était confuse préciosité
À maudire le temps, et ses absurdités
Qui ont fait de mon béat instinct
Paradoxal illogisme,
Une volupté dérobée…
The Flight of Reason
Sheer obscurity
freeing itself skyward,
now spreading, in beautifully
afflicted flames, brings to my dissonance
a fatal moroseness.
A fanatical burden,
undulating in great swells,
gloomily embellishes my mood
in which all of my illusions
are nurtured and born.
A sinister crevice
protrudes in the refined sphere,
in symbiosis, dissipates,
flying far ahead of me
like a weary joy.
Placid caresses
and my brain renews contact again
with my skin, sheltering from
the nocturnal hungers
with kisses aflame,
greet the walls humidify,
and I am once again wet,
up against him,
and ecstatic.
Next, the succession of images
of ardour, the unachieved memory,
before my precious confusion,
spoiling time with all of its absurdities,
making of my blissful instinct
a paradox;
a de-robed volupté.
Hors du Temps
Á ce que Lentement je te caressais,
Chaque partie sans maladresse
À te faire gémir de torridité
Et les cajoleries se fassent mutuelles..
Sur ma nuque ta bouche descendait
S’attardait sur mes veines dressées
Jouant en succion, á m’affoler.
Mes mains, sur ta peau enfiévrée,
Le long de tes cuisses, remontèrent,
Aux souffles courts que tu émettais..
Je chuchotais à tes courbes affamées,
Á quel point, avide, je m’extasiais,
À te faire torturer, et je m’enflammais
Quand de tes gestes, sur moi, passionnés,
Tu égayais mon cœur, à l’étreindre.
Trempées de plaisir, mes lèvres sur toi,
De ton corps ne se rassasiaient…
Une parenthèse á nous enchantée,
Un moment hors le temps.
Timelessness
returning again to you whom I would slowly caress
to every part without mishandling you
but only to make you groan from torrid pleasures
full of our mutual cajoling
upon my neck your lips begin their descent
lingering upon my rejuvenated veins
playfully sucking – and then panic-stricken
my hands latch onto your feverish skin
upon your thighs mounting
you your breathe shortening
grasping helpless your taut fingers
play the piano above the cotton sheets
some further ghost sonata fever engendered
while I whisper to your famished flanks
delighting in being your torturer
your passionate cries and gestures
tenderising me like butcher’s meat
pummelled by a thousand succulent hammers
drowning in such pleasure my lips upon yours
lost in this parenthesis which continually unwinds
Les collants de sa belle
Il regardait La glace. Mais Elle lui était indifférente. Renvoyant le pâle reflet d’elle. Elle, la belle et ses belles longues jambes métissées, qui tourbillonnait les zéphyrs des vents les plus tenaces… les moins divinisés… tout en exhalant n souvenir miséreux des courbes splendides qui s’ondulaient devant la surface réfléchissante.
Les draps froissés du lit se rétrécissaient sans son corps, de même que certains vêtements qu’elle avait oubliés auparavant, laissés béants, les chemisiers et les collants.
Ah ses collants ! Il sentait encore dans ses narines leur goût rigoureusement salé sur son visage, il n’avait l’aptitude d’aspirer la réalité qui s’installait entre leur violence tolérée jusqu’à ce qu’elle fût partie elle, la belle et lui, le pauvre avait enfin compris la raison derrière la nervosité de ses collants extensibles…et la mollesse de ses moindres maux illusoires.
Il n’osait écarter les rideaux de peur de trouver derrière les morceaux de tissus, les vestiges glorieux des après-midi au soleil, parfumés de leur béatitude lorsqu’ils. Tous les deux, seuls, ne faisaient rien d’autre que d’investiguer leurs pupilles assorties et s’habiller tous les deux en collants…Se dévoiler les plaisir des palpations et s’effleurer les ivresses d’une main traversant les chairs des collants …
La vérité était moitié dévoilée, l’inconnu était comme l’ombre sur un corps sans soie. Sans des collants d’enfer. Sans barrières à freiner leur jouissance, non plus des règles à prodiguer un érotique ton qui longeait la rive, de la folie…et les ombres de leurs corps qui se reflétaient contre les espoirs nuageux, venaient réchauffer les orteils… de leur clarté venaient transpercer les cœurs.
Lui le pauvre…il guettait sournoisement quelques rasades lunaires, assoiffés… confortablement installés dans sa pudeur pleine de draps et de sueur.
Avant qu’elle fût partie, il investissait ses jambes bellement dessinées, enjolivées par l’arôme du jasmin et du café noir d’un matin bavard de tout et de rien.
Il les faisait sa propriété ….ses cuisses en symbiose avec ses genoux allant jusqu’au bout de ses orteils …et il les palpait en pâture à ses mains qu’il l’espérait ne lui faisaient pas trop languir.
Car elle, à la peau d’une pudique caresse, pouvait de sa délicatesse démolir les fragilités des déesses.
Puis il arrive qu’il perdait tellement la raison de ses minutieuses pores enivrantes qu’il devenait analphabète face aux lettres oscillatoires que les veines invisibles sur ses jambes, au-dessous ses coulants, faisaient jaillir telle qu’une fontaine à contours harmonieux, imprimés d’une dizaine de prisonniers.
Hélas, il se rendait compte que ses lèvres à lui, ne lui servaient plus qu’à embrasser dans un périmètre bien défini…
Qu’il lui était interdit de franchir à cette époque du jeu…
Aussi était-il confiné dans cet espace brassé embrassé, il passait et repassait d’inspection en inspection. Tout comme ce soir …tout comme chaque soir… À la quête d’un souvenir rayonné… á la quête des collants de sa belle.
The Tights of his Beloved
He looked in the mirror. But, it was indifferent, reflecting back only a pale imitation of her; she with the beautiful long sun-blessed limbs which troubled the zephyrs of even the most tenacious winds, the least deified, and which exhaled for him the troubling memories of her most splendid form, undulating across the surface of the reflection.
Without her body, the crumpled sheets of the bed were shrunken now. He noted the same phenomenon taking place with the few clothes which she had left behind; beatific offerings- her shirt, skirt, and the pair of tights…
Ah, the tights! He picked them up from the chair and pressed them to his two nostrils, inhaling the vigorous scent of her. He didn’t yet have the ability to comprehend the violence which her parting was already having upon him, and he was only beginning to understand the complex nervousness which the extensiveness of the tights had provoked… the softness of the fabric indicative of his least terrifying illusions.
He didn’t dare yet pull back the curtains, afraid what else he might find illuminated by the glorious afternoon sun, his mind still cocooned, like her body had been in the warm envelope of the tights, in the beatitude of the events, during the recent hours when they had both done nothing else but investigate one another in open mouthed wonder.
The re-discovered pleasures of the drunken palpitations when he had traversed her adored flesh, enveloped in lycra and nylon…
The truth was partly uncovered, the unknown won over like a shadow… His silk-less body, stripped of the fetish, without barring to stop their pleasure… No, more rules were needed to build up the erotic tension, to blanket them both, deep in the madness of the shadows.
Ma féminité ce soir
Avoir mal à en hurler…
Mais hurler en silence.
Car ma féminité ce soir se révolte.
Elle est là, elle me sourit
Elle est là depuis si longtemps…
J’ai essayé de l’enrober
J’ai tenté de l’expulser …
Mais toujours elle est de retour
Perpétuelle, fâcheuse …
J’ai cru l’avoir parfois humidifier.
Mais elle sait et l’a toujours su
Me fendre en milles et un mirage
Me torturer…
Elle envoûte mes nuits,
S’amuse à m’attiser…
À m’enterrer subitement,
Dans un cocon malveillant…
Difficile de lutter,
D’écarter sa mollesse …
Car ma féminité ce soir s’aliène.
Que faire contre ce silence ?
Contre ses fables qui délabrent…
Que faire dans l’épreuve ?
Contre cette féminité qui dégrade…
Car moi ; le silence de moi, nuit
Je m’ennuie
Le jour et la nuit
Alors je fume
Je me parfume
Je m’enrhume
Je traîne
Ma peine
Flemme
Dans ce lieu
Je m’ennuie mieux
À cœur caverneux.
Qu’on l’en ôte les chimères
De ses cieux à mon aveu…
Car ma féminité ce soir se rebelle….
Elle hausse les murailles et s’emballe.
My Femininity, Tonight…
To hurt, and then scream,
But to do so in silence…
As tonight my femininity revolts
She is there, smiling at me
She has been there for a long time
I tried to clothe her
I attempted to expulse her…
But, as ever, she returns again
Perpetually pissed
I thought, at times, that I could humour her
But she always knows, as indeed she has always known,
How to smash me into smithereens,
Just to torture me
She bewitches my nights
Amusing herself by poking me
Burying me subtly
In a malevolent cocoon
It is so hard to fight back
To avoid her quagmire
My femininity tonight, she is crazed
What to do in the silence,
Against her decadent fables?
What can I do against this test?
Against her who so degrades me?
For I – this silence here which is me –
In the night, am so bored
And, so I smoke
Put on some perfume
Catch a cold
Lazily
I train
My pain
In this site
Where I become so bored
Inside this cavernous heart
To remove all the chimeras
Skyward, which is my confession…
For my femininity rebels tonight,
She raises up the walls to encircle me.
CeeJay ( Belgium )
Transversions by Peter O’ Neill
Le mal en l’homme
Hadès a ses raisons que la raison ignore
En bourreau cagoulé il obscurcit les nues
Osant singer son frère il manie le foudre
Et décoche son napalm en grande quantité.
Evil in Man
Hell has its reasons which reason ignores
The masked torturer obscures the clouds
Bloodying his victims illuminates
Letting fly naplam in great quantities.
Nous
Comme les atomes dans leur ronde
Les planètes dansent leurs circonvolutions
Le derviche les accompagne inlassable
Tel l’enfant qui jusqu’à l’extase joue à s’étourdir.
We
Like protons spinning round
The planets dance in circumvolutions
Unflagging the dervich accompanies them
Like a child whose playful ecstasy deafens.
La part de soi
Sur un chemin venu de l’âme
Tu t’es égaré au plus intime de ton être
Là où le soi est plus grand que le moi
Dont le chant exprime le fascinant silence.
What is Integral
From a path leading from the heart
You parked your most intimate nature,
There where the other is much greater then the one,
And where the song sings of the most telling silence.
https://soundcloud.com/seajayceejay6/b122-les-riches
https://soundcloud.com/seajayceejay6/b133-le-po-te
https://soundcloud.com/seajayceejay6/b114-cest-la-routine-de-la-r
https://soundcloud.com/seajayceejay6/b84-slaming-palestine-20max
https://soundcloud.com/seajayceejay6/b90-slaming-les-javanaises
https://soundcloud.com/seajayceejay6/b80-slaming-la-pieuvre-mp3
https://soundcloud.com/seajayceejay6/b85-slaming-nanny-studio-vrai
Le temps
Mon corps
Comme un tronc recouvert de lierre Emprisonné de raisons Dans l’attente immobile Du temps des changements.
Les pas de l’errance
Vers quels bords du monde suis-je allé De quelles mers ai-je traversé les rives La carte de crédit en guise d’identité Avec mes mots de plumes contre les mots de pierres ?
Suis-je rêveur ou rêvé
Les dauphins mythiques sont devenus poissons volants Sur ce bleu infini Qui n’annonce nulle terre où reposer. Suis-je rêveur ou rêvé ?
Chronique de guerre
De nouveaux murs s’écroulent soudain
Le temps existe pour les murs. Cela ne ressemble pas à l’idée de l’enfer Cela ressemble à l’absence de paradis Il n’y a plus d’arbres ni de fleurs ni d’herbes ni de feuilles.
Les vars
Quand les montagnes fument
Comme s’il y avait la guerre. Que les nuages lourds Décollent du creux des vaux. Nous feignons d’ignorer avec un rire de gorge.
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BIO
Peter O’ Neill
was born in Cork in 1967. He is the author of seven collections of poetry, his most recent being More Micks than Dicks, A Hybrid Beckettian Novella in 3 Genres, Famous Seamus, London, 2017. He is also the author of The Dublin Trilogy, a work inspired by Baudelaire of which The Enemy, Transversions from Charles Baudelaire (Lapwing, Belfast, 2015) is the final instalment. He has edited And Agamemnon Dead, An Anthology of Early Twenty First Century Irish Poetry (mgv2>publishing, France, 2015) with the poet and publisher Walter Ruhlmann. His publisher in the UK, Sam Vitale, hopes to bring out Commuting with Baudelaire later in the year to mark the 150th anniversary of the French poet’s death.
http://peterseanoneill.blogspot.fr/
http://mgv2publishing.blogspot.ie/2016/05/divertimento-muse-is-dominatrix-by.html?m=1
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Thomas Brezing
(1969) has exhibited his work widely in Ireland and mainland Europe, most recently with Klaus Effern in Finland. For a full list of his many diverse exhibitions please see his website:
http://thomasbrezing.weebly.com/
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Dorsaf Garbaa
has had work published in A New Ulster and mgv2>Datura, she is currently working on her first collection.
https://issuu.com/amosgreig/docs/anu_issue_37
http://en.calameo.com/books/000028151d0fbab65d01d
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CeeJay
( 1946 ) is a prolific writer. His debut collection Bombe voyage, bombe voyage was published by Maelström revolution, Bruxelles, 2014. He is also a very fine rapper.